Robotic exploration of Mars has yielded tantalizing clues about what was once a water-soaked planet. Deep beneath the soils of Mars may lie trapped frozen water, possibly with traces of still-extant primitive life forms. Climate change on a vast scale has reshaped Mars. With Earth in the throes of its own climate evolution, human outposts on Mars could be a virtual laboratory to study these vast planetary changes. And the best way to study Mars is with the two hands, eyes and ears of a geologist, first at a moon orbiting Mars and then on the Red Planet’s surface.
Mobilizing the space program to focus on a human colony on Mars while at the same time helping our international partners explore the moon on their own would galvanize public support for space exploration and provide a cause to inspire America’s young students. Mars exploration would renew our space industry by opening up technology development to all players, not just the traditional big aerospace contractors. If we avoided the pitfall of aiming solely for the moon, we could be on Mars by the 60th anniversary year of our Apollo 11 flight.
Nope, the best way to study Mars is with robots. Those Mars rover missions cost about $250 million a pop. An optimistic estimate puts the price of sending humans to Mars at $160 billion (and others think it could cost as much as a trillion dollars). That’s 640 Mars rover missions.
I really hope that Obama kills this mission to bars Mars and the space shuttle program, both of which are titanic wastes of money. Just because Gregg Easterbrook agrees doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Maybe Tim F will write a post saying I’m an idiot for not realizing the genius of sending men to Mars, but I just don’t see how it makes sense to talk about a trillion dollar vanity project when a trillion dollars is apparently too much to spend to give everyone health insurance. And when the trillion dollar vanity project has no more scientific merit than radically cheaper robotic missions.